The glory days were when PLAW was around, and he added so much class to the boards, it is for sure they will never be as good without him. That said, however the decline has happened on two levels.

One, in the section about the films, it gets harder and harder to come up with new topics, new insights, or new anything. We can only discuss "who opened the drapes" or whether it was a mistake for Michael to kill Fredo" or what Fredo knew or didn't know about the hits. Too often nowadays threads (and I plead guilty to starting a few) deal with incongruity or impossible plot twists that are really directorial shortcuts or directorial license too move the plot along. That said people still come up with good stuff. There's a post today about Vito's dress being understated for the Solzzo meeting that provided a new insight.

More recently, there has been a marked deteroiration of the level of comraderie on the other topics. there never used to be personal attacks on people because of their political, religious or other points of view. Nowadays some people think it is open season and they predicate their rants with comments like "all libs are naive to the effect that Obama's Muslim/Kenyan background is ruining this country because" or "all you gun toting nazi neocon morons who want to nuke France think...." In the glory days this just "wasn't done," and we all self policed the boards leaving the moderators out of the discussion. Those days, sadly are gone.